now to a discussion of the alliance between the united

states, australia, and the united kingdom featuring two members of the house armed services committee and former deputy national security adviser matthew pottinger, hosted by the ronald reagan presidential library . >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to panel six, putting partnership into practice, keeping the defense operations through aukus . please welcome our distinguished panelists. >> all right. >> thank you, everyone. i am delighted to be moderating today's panel about a very important topic known as aukus

. what is interesting about having this panel today as it comes as a time when we see more engagement in the united states in the region, by the navy. as recently as yesterday, more announcements about technology sharing. it also comes at a time when there are two questions about legislative measures that need to be reaching a point where the deals continue to move forward. i don't think we can ask for a better panel. i would like to start with the executive vice president of boeing and chief executive officer defense space. representative moulton . sitting next to him is pottinger who is the former

u.s. principal deputy security divisor. sitting next to him is ambassador rudd and sitting next to him is representative whitman from the state of the commonwealth. >> that is it. >> thank you. >> i want to everyone to submit your questions. >> i would like to begin by pointing out some of those surveyed results from the survey. there were two questions that came up. the first one asks, how much, if any, have you heard about the office? 70% said you were not aware. when they asked the participants if they wanted to see the agreement in which the u.s., the uk, and the australia were to reach an agreement on

counter agreements from china, india percent said they supported a. i would like to start with our u.s. lessee maker first and then i will ask the ambassador to follow-up. based on those surveys, what is the strategic importance of this deal. what does it do to achieve with the american public is saying that they want which is these three nations working together to combat threats from china? >> i think that is -- thank you. i think that aukus, the cornerstone of our efforts have the capability to deter china. if you look at the advantage that we have in the world, that is significant. we have to be able to build

more submarines. the way that we do that is not just to increase capacity in the united states but to work with our partners in australia and the united kingdom, who were right there at the forefront, having the technology to be able to do that. look at the manufacturing that is taken home. if you look at the heavy industrial manufacturing capability of australia, one of the greatest capabilities across the globe, we need to utilize that. that is the most effective way that we can counter and deter the chinese in their influence in the indo pacific. it is important to us to make sure that the supplemental list coming up, the $3.4 billion for the submarine industrial base gets through. we want to make sure we build the number of suppliers. we have been working with the

australians, building the submarine industrial base there. we want to do more in the united states. historically, we can see that this is a turning point. with joint capabilities, amongst the three countries, we have the turning point to deter and counter chinese aggression in the indo pacific. >> i agree with my republican colleagues. we have been chatting about how the committees are on capitol hill. i think this is a completely bipartisan position. i wanted to step back for a second. it is important, not just about the details of the arrangement. it is about the big picture. i am amazed by the number of people who just don't understand how fundamental deterring china must be to our future. here is the deal.

if he does exactly what he says he will do and decides to invade taiwan, we have two terrible options. only two. they are both really bad. the first, of course, is that we defend taiwan. i am confident we will win that fight but we are talking vietnam war level casualties in a few weeks. we could wake up tomorrow and see two aircraft carriers at the bottom of the pacific ocean. the second option is that we say we are kidding. we are not going to do anything. we are not going to get involved. there are a lot of people who think that is a viable choice. we are ceding all of the advanced chip production in the world to chinese control. if all our other allies say the

united states is not serious about the commitment. our adversaries say that the united states won't step up to democracy. we have to succeed at deterring china. if we don't, and a war starts, we might win that war. it may very well escalate to world war iii. to everything that has gone well in ukraine, every analyst in the world expects that russia would conquer ukraine in a matter of weeks. we have to admit that the deterrence failed and we have to succeed to the deterrence in the pacific. anything that we do that increases deterrence, anything we are discussing about the select committee on china, which we both said where we talk about economic strategy, it all has to come back to deterrence. >> i wanted to expand on that point. >> what is it about this deal specifically that answers the threat that the american public

recognizes? >> i agree with everything we have heard on the left and right. one thing is it actually involves a major european power, the united kingdom. we don't want to see the kind of thinking -- the french president visited china and essentially on his flight home said taiwan is not really our problem. it is america's problem. it is partly in an answer to that as well. taiwan is coerced into coercively annexed. the effects of that are the financial crisis. this is what we will be feeling economically. it will be in a very different

world the next day, not someone who is amenable to free democracy. the fact that it is is quite crucial. >> i would imagine that it is shocking to hear 73% of the people have not heard of aukus . i would imagine the numbers are quite different in your country. >> what advantages can the united states gain from australia? >> just on your point, i am demonstrative on the 27. we had a minimal perspective. this is a very young agreement. we are talking about something that was signed off by the president and the prime minister. we just got into it in december. it is a new feature of the geopolitical landscape. it will become better known at

the time. on your question, which is in -- the bottom line here is that we all have a deeply real -- china is not a status quo. that is radically different. it is different when you apply that to taiwan. it brings into immediate focus the question of how do you sustain strategic stability under the right circumstances. there is only one answer. the flipside is a half hour

ago. the chinese communist party is not dumb. we can talk about deterrence and we talk about it as a concept but unless we form the conclusion that it is real, it has flesh and blood attached to it then i would not believe it. in the middle of it, what do you get? number one, we australians coinvest with you. it will be a combined investment. 6.5 billion u.s. dollars in the immediate years ahead. i have been to newport news. i know what the base looks like. this is not just a casual piece of cash, by the way. it makes it different, recruiting the workforce of the future. the second thing we get is

evolving over the immediate decade. you end up with the australian submarine slate with 10 boats. add that to your own, you are starting to look at a reasonable global community here. what is the third thing you get? >> you get the world's fourth building facility. we currently build conventional boats. that is under developments. the final thing that comes with this issue is, the complete based way in australia, you will have a fully fledged maintenance facility for all u.s. nuclear power folks which

you currently don't have. what i see from that is good, good, good. i think our head is in the right direction and i think that republicans and democrats in the house and the senate are getting behind these critical -- >> we have a number of defense industry countries represented here. based on what you have heard, what is the best incentive for private entity to collaborate? >> i will go back to the first question. i want to make it very practical. if you think about the adversary, going to find a loan is usually not the best position you want to be in. callout the people that would fight right there with you and collect your resources to

demonstrate that strength to the adversary first. then, if you are ready to fight, call them up and make it happen. from the industry perspective, that manifests himself in the way we operate with our partners and the two countries we are talking about, uk and australia. the capability and capacity that we have talked about earlier is so important to being able to defer our adversary and fight the fight. in our case, 4000 teammates in australia, another 5000 in uk, why would i not want to take advantage of all of that capacity and capability around the world to innovate the next generation of product? we have great, great examples of that. that is where it all starts. just the beginning part of it, which is taking advantage of the adversity to innovate.

when we feel those products, the fact that we have renovated together allows us to actually work together better when the fight happens. the focus is on architectural principles like interoperability and modularity and all of the things we are doing around autonomy. if we do those things together from the beginning, the right way, it allows us to communicate better and fight together that her. back to my point about how you really want to fight. with all of this, working together around the world with geographic diversity, allows us the sustainment world in keeping things moving forward, dealing with logistics and supply chains. it allows us to leverage each other and all of the capacity we have in the space as well. the incentive is clear to all of us. it allows us to work together. it allows us to innovate faster and take advantage of more political capability around the world and support the work in ways we have never done before. this is good news.

all of the diverse elements represent tremendous opportunities to go and do that. >> you have all done a wonderful job. there are a lot of practical challenges between now and then. i want to go to one of them. i will start with you. we have heard proposals that the transfer did not happen until the navy secretary is able to certify that the u.s. can produce this at a way that does not hurt u.s. national security. do you think that we will see bills that will be approved between pillar one and pillar two? if so, when will we see them? >> yes, i do. i think we will see some of that in the authorization act. we have the oversight and accountability act we have the submarine industrial base

building about 1.2 virginia class submarines per year. we have to get to build 2.3 per year along with one columbia class. that is a significant challenge. i believe that we can do that. the effort has to be getting the provisions in this year's path. it has to make sure that we fund the supplemental, which builds the industrial base. it has to be reflected in next year's president's budget, continued investment in the submarine industrial base. we want to make sure that agreements are long-term, multiyear agreements with australia, with the united kingdom in submarine building enterprise. i believe that those things will happen. you cannot have success if any one of those things don't happen. the supplemental has to happen this year. if it doesn't, it delays august. a delay in august shows, to china, that there may be a weakness and resolve.

i am confident there is no weakness. we have to be able to get that done. effort, and here is something that should put this in perspective. formula but all of those things have to be a part of that effort. here is something that should put this in perspective. if you look at the capacity of i the chinese to build ships, this is a sobering factor. they have 23 point 23.2 million tons of building ships. almost 100 times different. if you were to take all of our shipyards, every single one of them and combine them together on a geographic footprint, they would equal one of the more than dozen shipyards in china. the enterprise we have before us is significant. it is big. we have to get it done. the only way we do that is through sorts of agreements to

counter this threat from china. >> a quick point to your point about shipbuilding capacities. we have two east coast repair yards, wrong side of the world,c wrong ocean. not very helpful in the fight against china to be able to bring a strip ship into australia. >> that is a great point. we need capacity in the pacific to be able to repair those ships and not just here but elsewhere in the theater. you are not going to bring something 6000 miles here to get it repaired. mandated in australia we both pacific and. be friends with. have been that way for a long period of time now. i think through thick and thin, have proven to be a reliable ally. we did not try to burn down the white house either.

>> i think it was canadian troops under british command. so. >> i already detected that matt was a little bit. >> that is a while ago now. the bottom line is, they've gotg the geography, which my colleagues have just spoken to. i think the bottom line is this. i have seen numbers in terms of the shipyard constraint and capacity right now. whether it is 1.2, 1.43. the reverse, i should say. it needs to be. this is where the additional investment is critical. the existing pipeline of this administration, the supplemental of 3.4. the further investment must. this begins to make a change. interesting things. just the other day visiting, they have employment needs.

the workforce is never too early in schedule. the people they need on the shop floor for the next two minutes three years are not reported recruited in this post- covid environment. that is where i think aukus helps deliver response in terms of the added capability here. secondly, what you get? globally, you get an additional shipyard. if the ethos of our age is supply-chain resilience, we have an enormous advantage in the in the pacific with the most reliable ally. you have a capacity to evolve this entire resilient ecosystem. finally, with what is called aukus 2, the unspoken of the revolution. it is about, finally, have a

centrally later, deciding that the brits and the australians e can be trusted. the bottom line is this. if we had been trusting each other with sensitive, intelligent material since 1946, the time has come to have a seamless technology industry sector between the three of us. in both directions so we can turbocharge the development and innovation speed of getting ideas into product development and into the hands of war filing. i think there is a huge turbocharging of each other's ecosystems which is going to come out of this. that is the unspoken that's going to occur whether it's.

there is a huge revolution about to unfold and it has resilience built into it. >> i want to ask about the industrial capability. i will leave it to all of you to decide who wants to tackle this. does the u.s. need them to build another shipyard to have industrial capability to meet not only the demands of aukus but providing the navy with new missile submarines. should this be a part of the next dod budget and would congress support that? >> i will jump in because i feel very strongly about this. i do believe that we need additional capacity and capability, whether it is in the form of a new yard, which will take years to capitalize or whether something simpler, and that is having other yards like we see right now in places like austral, down in the gulf, that are building panels for

submarines, i think what you have to look at is how do we build an industrial base? you can do that immediately. you can take that capability and have them build parts for the submarine, bring those to newport news, have them assembled there. that gives you immediate capability and capacity. do we need another shipyard? i believe. how do we get that operationalized? it will take years to be able to do that. the question is how do we bridge that? we bridge that by using existing capability to build parts, not just for submarines but for surface ships and others, that is the way to close the gap. >> you talked about taking years. given the problems of sustaining, do you think there is a political will to sell 10% of the u.s. operational between that delta of what is the demand in the time it would take to boost capability in

production? >> i think there is. i think we have to. i think that if you look at how the agreement is going to go forward, i think as we sell those submarines, i think there is also an element of a metric to say organic capacity has to continue to mature and be built in australia, which i think it will but those two have to be tied together. i think it is incredibly or important for both countries to be able to demonstrate that so we can say that australia's 50% or so more complete with organic capacity. that assures australians and americans that the enterprise is going to be successful and going to be there in the long run. >> we are not starting flat- footed on this. right now, we have already had our third class of graduates. this was in charleston on nuclear boats. secondly, we've got 50-100

australians already in or on their way on the virginia class maintenance. we have created an additional 4- 5000 university coats for stem courses. we are gearing up quite rapidly and legislation is not even through the congress yet. if legislation doesn't get to the congress, you better let me know because we have already started. we think this is right and we want to hit the ground running. >> it is important to bring this back for deterrence and why this. we can sell that to the american public. i would rather have australia in the fight with us with the same capabilities, well coordinated, our navy's training and operating together. i think when china looks out and sees not just the united states from far away saying we don't want you to do this but

they see a lot of allies, including australia, right up close, that is help. we grow up learning that when alliances were a bad idea because that is what led to world war i, but interns, i think those kind of alliances are really good. that is why we have a nato alliance. one of the greatest signs is that china hates aukus. that is a very important sign. >> i think that is a very important point. if you watch chinese reaction to the things the united states does strategically, the biggest and most emotional reaction from china was when we entered into the aukus agreement. t, when they see advancement happening in the aukus agreement, that drives them crazy. that tells me and should tell the rest of us that that is what worries them the most because they look at their effort. their effort is transactional coercion. they look to coerce others through to do things to help them. they do not like it when we

have these agreements that are actually based upon trust and joint efforts between trends of the united states. that concerns them. that is why this is an incredibly valuable agreement and i think will be the cornerstone of what we can do to deter and combat the chinese. >> one of the other challenges we have seen is the fight in the workforce to build submarines. even if the funding was usthere there might be personal challenges. i wanted to ask you, mr. ted colbert, what you think needs to do differently to address these workforce shortages? what are some solutions that they have not thought about? what are some of the things that you are thinking about in terms of tackling this issue? expanding the workforce poll. >> we don't make those but we do all kinds of other things. si i will talk about that. the workforce is -- every discussion that we have today about stabilizing and building up other things that we do in

our business. there is a ton of tactics. i will share some with you but i think we can all leverage and scale. one is going back in the pipeline of talent and creating conditions to increase talent in the stem fields. we have a program we kicked off in san antonio that is bringing young talent into our environment. getting them curious about things that we do, taking up the fear factor of hard, technical things and really building that next generation of talent. the secondary that i think is really important and i hope will speak to this audience is our veteran population. our veteran population is rich with great, great talent. the fact that we want them to stay in the military and continue to develop and do their jobs there, there is a lot of folks that want to work in industry and we've got to create environments so they can

transition into our companies. our company is a little bit less than 15% veterans. we want to keep that moving forward as we go forward. n another great source of talent. it is going after places and it talent that we didn't typically go before to open up the aperture of the pool. we go and recruit more at our traditional schools and around the world but also, historically black colleges and universities. a great, great rich source of talent around the country. we are doubling down on that as well. it is really all about think about what you have been doing for the last 10-20 years and doing a bunch of things that are very different from that. t' that is exactly what we have been doing in our company. and then back to this discussion, let's leverage our. boeing is known to be a large exporter but we also aspire to be a global company that is

building talent capability and capacity around the world. not just sending work packages to parts of the world but building real end-to-end capability with our teams in different countries. the australia is a great example of that. we developed a platform from scratch with a great workforce focused on australia with opportunity to do all sorts of things in the long run. that is another piece of the equation. leveraging the global talent pool with our allies. those are the things we focus on. >> autonomous platforms, next- generation talent. i think this brings up a really important point. we heard this morning, talking about the next generation fighter is not going to be a lot of. it's going to be a fighter with counterparts. we are not talking about that enough in the navy but that is clearly come. i think in these are blind at

getting there. when we think about what the next generation shipyard is going to be like, i agree we need to expand shipyard capacity but not just in the traditional way. it is about developing underwater autonomous vehicles and what do we need to produce those quickly in a scale to make sure they are the best in the world? >> look. . our industry has been very long cycle in nature with big things that we build. mostly based. the future is about bringing together those big, big things that we build with great software and create technology, space. all of those things move at a d more rapid pace than ever before. you have talent that moves. >> i think it is incredibly important to build on what ted said. the pentagon through the years has been a hardware-based organization. if you look at the future, the future will be driven by software. the pentagon needs to be a

software driven organization where software informs hardware. software, through the use of ai and others, can adapt almost at real-time to challenges that wea face around the world. that is how we are going to successfully counter the building capability from adversaries around the world. making sure the pentagon is a software-based organization. >> the good thing about aukus proceeding right now is that in aukus pillar one and pillar 2, which is about all emerging defense industries technologies and underpinning sides. this is the double revolution being launched at the same time between yourselves, ourselves, and the brits. therefore, it actually represents a new piece of flexible machinery to deal with

the enormous strategic utility advantage within the united states has. by adding ss and capabilities. simultaneously, mindful of everything. the boeing australia project is a really interesting one. a vehicle going by the name of. it is right out there. it is really impressive. will become super impressive if once we remove restrictions from around this future evolution, becomes easily adaptable to the united states and other allies as well. that takes what is currently a really constrained into one which is open, quick, nimble, free. personnel moving in both

directions. common projects. one which is bureaucratically tied to the earth, using a set s of resections which the australians and the brits were trustworthy as the bulgarians 50 years ago, which is where it came from. and beyond that, they sewere dealing with the radical future of technology as well as the immediate. i think that is why we got under. >> i love your concept of the revolution. the revolution when. my engineers in australia, the uk, and the united states can not work in their silos anymore but in the same conference room on the same whiteboard and saw big problems without having to get licenses to go do that.

today, they have to get licenses to do everything from changing bolts on landing gear to figuring out how to deal with logistics in the sustained world. that is the revolution. that is what i am hoping we get out of exhilaration. >> under the current system, by the way, before this revolution, to order replacement cruise missiles for australian vessels, to get a new batch of. >> six years. you would not want to have a war, would you? the systems from you as well. secondly, have been bought out through missiles of the refund. we had to go through a separate process to get the operating manual for the new. that is how it works at the moment. we do not have time as friends, partners, and allies become to screw around anymore. this is too important. >> as i was running into this

panel, i saw matt thornberry, the longtime chairman of armed services committee and a mentor to me. i said what should i say about aukus ? he had time to say one thing. he said don't make it so hard to be our friends. that is really important. >> i want to come back to and pillar 2. before, i want to ask you something, mr. kevin rudd. expanding aukus, given that we are combating threats from china and other nations in the region that are interested in doing the same. notably japan. do you think the u.s. needs to think about expanding or do some of these need to be sorted out before you look at expanding? very simply, should we be? >> a former australian prime minister who is not ambassador kevin rudd recommended bringing france into it, which

continues the risk there would ' be a f in front of aukus . countries want, just like people want to be on the winning team, you have winning players in aukus . we have to pull this together, prove the pl contract. knock pillar one out of the park, pillar 2 out of the park. and then people will be knocking on the door to join. when we look at a future where we might expand aukus, i would be looking at japan first . what you need to do -- i was talking earlier to admiral montgomery. whenever you have a group of countries trying to work together, it usually goes to the lowest common denominator. for example, if japan, you

wontto be able to share just as much sensitive intelligence and information to be able to stitch together that industrial base the weight that kevin has just laid out. i think we should bring japan in. >> is there a risk. i think one is about this group, it becomes a -for-tat that china is responding to the alliance and the work that is being done together. that leads to escalation. is there a threat about? in terms of expanding to so many countries, is that something worth thinking about? >> what? >> let's say japan and south korea join. does end up creating a problem in some way in that you have china responding to what the

nations are doing and an escalation? >> i see what you mean. look, go back to australia for a moment, there is a historian named jeffrey blaney from melbourne. he is now in his 90s. i saw him when i visited the summer. he wrote a really impressive years ago called the causes of war. what he did was he examined 400 years. the last 400 years of war and what their causes were. really interrogated that as well as. one of the amazing things he found and was not expecting to find is that there really is no such thing as an accidental war. you do not provoke china -- you do not accidentally stumble into a war because we are giving ourselves a defensive capability designed to deter a war. we do not want into talk ourselves into the kind of fraudulent arguments that vladamir putin used when he was

saying nato, this is really about nato, even though nato has been around for decades. it has never fought an offensive war in its history. he says i'm going into ukraine because of nato. that is fraudulent. in fact, if we had done more to sure up the defenses of ukraine in advance, i do not think we would be in the situation that we are in right now. >> back in with what matt said, and i have been studying china all my life. i started studying chinese at the end of the cultural revolution. it begins to put a date on me. y student attend as well. in its core area allergy understand strength? >> respectful of strength and of weakness. everything else is detailed. that is the core organizing principle. therefore, we should not say oh my god, will this result in some spiral?

i think that is the inference in your question. our objective is to cause t military commission to wake up each morning and look in the mirror and say i think it is still too risky to do something unilaterally with taiwan. whatever the parts are of that deterrence, whether it is one of the other capabilities, which are permissible with the united states armed forces, whether it's the capabilities if you are allies, and whether it is warmed in the next 10 years but which radically mix up the game. one of the worst things we can do is simply engage in a static game. deterrence is a dynamic equation. it's so delighted when i was talking about, which is always

to be innovating ahead of time and. that is what produces the ultimate equation. none of this none of us in this room want to see a war. it would be catastrophic in its global consequences in terms of lives lost in the region here and elsewhere. therefore, getting this actual machinery right, including these new elements which will come out of aukus pillar 2. asymmetric capabilities. that is all part of the ultimate analytical in the commission which is is this too risky? is this giving too flexible, potent, and expensive a range

of capabilities. our classic wargame over taiwan and reality. >> i think that is an incredibly important reason behind focusing on aukus as it is today with australia, united kingdom, united states, to demonstrate the disagreement can work to demonstrate. that we have deliverables that come from this agreement, to demonstrate that we build that pillar. the unspoken, most important part of this agreement. not to diminish the submarine building enterprise but i think being able to do that first is incredibly important. i think it speaks to the value of the agreement that others want to join already because they see what is unfolding with this. they see the value of this. i would caution bringing others in at this point until we have a strong foundation moving forward with this and we see those deliverables. i think they are going to happen. remember, it is a long-term commitment by all of our

governments. we have to show that from congress to congress, administration to administration, this effort continues. i think that it will but it will not be easy. let's not dilute it by, at this point, adding others into it. >> let's stay with pillar 2 and talk about technology. is a collaboration that boeing is done with australia. i wonder what takeaways boeing got from that program. what does it tell us? how does it inform technology sharing and aukus going forward? other lessons based on boeing experience? >> yeah. similar to many that you talked about, developing this autonomous capability in australia from design to manufacturing, demonstrate the ability to work together. engineers around the world to work together in vastly different time zones, which is

a thing. obviously. and be able to field that ability with a lot of promise and potentially, a lot of capability going forward. what we have learned from it is one, we can do it but two, it is really hard to do. really hard from a licensing perspective. our teams spend more time dealing with a lot of the policy types issues than engineering in some cases. that is not productive back to the point that we were making earlier. we are in a dynamic world that requires pace. if you think about creating a free zone where we don't have oi to go out to, we can innovate at a faster pace and that, to me, is the biggest opportunity that we have going forward. to increase the velocity of this innovation, building what we started, using it as a path to learn how to globally

engineer and porting other to other things that support our fight together. the pillar 2 items, many of them, cybersecurity is ubiquitous. it is not a geographically discrete ring. it is everywhere. if we figure out how to innovate, how to cyber proof our products and the environment around us together, it keeps us safer in the long run. again, it is getting the licensing of all the stuff in the middle out of the way so our people can do work. >> i want to build on that. using the question from our audience, i want to ask you, mr. seth moulton. what is the place for smaller defense companies? i imagine technology as you see it. >> the innovation is happening at smaller right now. that is reality. it's not that the primes are innovating to some degree, but the fastest pace of innovation is happening with the smallest

companies and we got to bring them into the mix. th i love the idea of having australian companies be a part of that. fundamentally contributing to pushing the pentagon. there are uiso many things that we do well. not just well but the best in b the world. moving quickly with acquisitions and adopting new technologies is not one of them. the more pressure that we have not just from smaller companies but from smaller companies amongst our allies, the better. we need to pick up the pace. >> the other question, you guys shut down any idea of, despite what great name it would be. if there is not expense innovations, could there be an expansion of capabilities that you could add to the partnership? i believe that is an open question for whoever would like to take it. >> i think if you look carefully at pillar 2 of aukus it is open on the technology question. the kidefinitions contained

within the draft rep legislation are broad. there are categories of elegy to be looking at in five years time, we have a tegna taxonomy for yet. why restrain ourselves to focusing? those other two categories. i think the key thing is to make sure the operationalization of pillar two and having clearly in our mind, one mission statement. a seamless u.s./uk/australian defense industry base. that is the mission statement. i think if the legislation goes through in its current form and does not get strangled by regulations to give effect, i am optimistic that will not be the case but i'm going to hang around to make sure it is not.

and i think were going to go well with this. on geographical expansion, caution. i agree with matt that once we've gone beyond kicking some goals and convincing the american public, the political class in this country, republicans, democrats, laporte over the complexity of this legislation. m respectful of how much time committees have spent on this stuff. if we get it through, we prove it is is a success. then why not have a long and open conversation with our japanese friends? the third largest economy in the world. it has a phenomenal technology tradition. they got some things to do in terms of the security arrangements. they are fully familiar with that. to cross a whole bunch with those wrestled.

i think if you had us three and downstream. economies like japan and korea. >> i think the greatest untapped potential in this agreement is pillar 2. the things that we can do together. quantum computing, artificial intelligence, the technology that can be shared is incredibly important. that will not get operationalized unless we, as a congress, break down those walls that are placed. a cold war relic that gets in the way today of 21st century needs for transfer of technology. that is the key to making sure we unlock the potential in aukus under pillar two. we can do that. we have to do that quickly. we need to get that passed, in place. prime minister kevin rudd is ant

and advocate saying help us. help us get through the impediment. i think it was your word. you treat canada better than you treat us under disagreement. >> ambassador, i'm going to give you the final question. there was a think tank that ak while australia has made the necessarily divestment, it's overall defense budget appears to be shrinking. how do you make sure that aukus does not cloud out other defense investments in innovation? >> the government back home has been pretty mindful on how to incorporate this massive, multi- hundred billion dollar investment in becoming a country which can produce its own service and maintenance for nuclear powered submarines

while doing the rest of what we need to do in terms of overall capabilities set. it is for those reasons the australian government recently conducted what is called the defense strategic review, which is a complete re-examination of all the capabilities we have in the navy, air force, where we flight 35 as well as army. therefore, there will be some changes in the overall capabilities set which will favor strongly. secondly, you are going to see increased. current defense in australia are well above. whereas i cannot hearsay and in three years time, it will be hitting north not south. the simple reason that all these capabilities cost money. also, we are confident in australia, there is a deep sense of national security like there is in this country.

we have shared so much in terms of the combined security in the pacific over, frankly, getting on for 100 years. therefore, left or right, liberal or conservative has viewed the national security for free. it does not. you have to invest and continue to invest. i am pretty confident that future australian governments, mindful of the strategic review. when i first started focusing on this when i was prime minister, i saw what was happening with. starting from about 2008-9 in at the chinese defense numbers published and what we assumed were unpublished. that is when my own thinking on all these questions began to change fundamentally. we, therefore have to be disciplined in our country,

united kingdom. see what is doing in japan for s a country which is the third largest economy in the world. that's going to be massively transformative. together, with the great challenge, i think we are all capable of doing this. remember. it is strength. >> we have covered u.s. domestic politics, technology, pillar 1, pillar 2. i want to thank you for a thorough conversation. audience, i will ask you to join me in thanking our panelists for this discussion. >> ladies and gentlemen, this concludes panel 6. panel 8 will begin in 10 minutes on this t stage and panel nine will be

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